Authors: Brenna Lyons
“Annandale Police,” he barked, well aware that his ridge plates were extended. “Open the door, please.”
“Gabe,” Thomas cautioned. “Settle down.”
Settle down? With a female and child that smell of my nest behind that door, in an unknown condition?
Of course, there was no way for Thomas to know that.
And no time to explain it.
He forced his ridge plates back and knocked briskly at the door. “Police. Please, open the door, ma’am.” Gabe didn’t want to have to break the door down, but if she didn’t open it, he would have no choice.
If she is Xxanian or a human female with a Xxanian boyfriend or mate, she may not be willing to emerge for a human officer.
He rumbled out a soothing sound in Xxan, encouraging her to let him protect her.
There was a moment of silence. A sob followed. Then the lock clicked open.
Xxan.
What is a Xxanian female doing in a café like this one? It’s a given she can’t eat what they serve. Meeting a human friend? Using the restroom to change the baby?
Assess the situation now. Get answers later.
Gabe eased the door open, well aware that a Xxanian female protecting a young one might still attack.
The sight behind the door stopped him in his tracks. The female sitting on the floor—blood coursing down her face and matting her dark hair—wasn’t Xxanian, but the young one in her arms—wearing the flexible, strapped sunglasses Xxanians put on their young—clearly was. She wasn’t a stranger, either.
He knelt at her side. “Abby?”
The young one looked up at him, and Gabe tongue-scented to be certain before he spoke.
****
Abby sighed in relief at the sight of Gabe. When she’d heard the Xxanian sound, she’d hoped it was him and not the other Xxanian they had on the force. But either would have been acceptable, in this case. If anyone would keep Michael safe, it would be a Xxanian male.
The Xxan are wired that way. Aren’t they? Protect young, at all costs, even the young of another Xxanian.
“My son,” he breathed.
Before she could respond to that, he was shouting out orders to someone.
“Thomas, get an ambulance here...and get backup.” He pressed at the cut on her forehead hard enough to make Abby’s head spin.
The other officer snorted. “You put them down alone. Why would we need backup now?”
“You’ll need help taking them to the station.”
The human officer appeared over Gabe’s shoulder, a spare set of plastic handcuffs they used when they had more than one prisoner in his hand. “What? Where will you be?”
“Going to the hospital with them.” He tipped his head toward Abby and Michael.
“Gabe, old buddy, I know—”
He motioned to Michael, his ridge plates extending. “This is my son, Thomas. He is not going anywhere without me.”
Thomas paled, and he shot a glance from one side of him to the other. “Backup. Right away.” He retreated a few steps, and the sound of the cuffs announced him restraining one of the men who had attacked her. “Believe me, pal. You move an inch, and he just may have to kill you.”
Abby focused on Gabe with no small amount of difficulty. In the background, Thomas was following Gabe’s orders, calling in an ambulance for her and more officers for the prisoners.
Gabe’s ridge plates were in flux, a sure sign that he was brutally angry and trying to control it. “You should have told me.”
“Not now, please.” There was so much to explain, and her head ached too much to do it coherently.
He met her gaze and nodded. “But soon.” It wasn’t an order.
“Yes.” It was about time she did the adult thing and faced her son’s father.
Michael reached out for Gabe, and the man in question lifted the squirming baby from her arms with one big hand. Gabe’s eye slits narrowed behind his dark glasses, and Abby followed his line of sight. There was blood on Michael’s cheek. Gabe’s muscles tightened down in preparation to spring.
If I don’t do something, he’s going to kill them all and end up in a lethal injection booth.
“It’s not his blood. It’s not mine, either,” she hastened to assure him.
Well, of course it’s not Michael’s.
Their son had the orange-tinted blood typical of Xxanian mixes, the same type of blood that ran in Gabe’s veins.
Gabe looked at her, his gaze ranging up and down Abby’s body. “Our son bit one of those
zhirrakkah
?”
She’d only heard Gabe use that term once before, when security had caught a rapist on campus. If she wasn’t so sick to her stomach, Abby would have nodded in agreement to whatever foul term that was in Xxan. “Yes. The bastard grabbed for Michael, and I turned. He got a handful of my shirt instead, and Michael bit him. That’s how we got this far.”
Abby suspected her fear had set Michael off. The Xxan were scent oriented, and biting when she was frightened would likely be instinctual for Michael.
A smile pulled up at Gabe’s lips, and he winked at their son. “Good boy. Always protect the females.”
Michael looked at his father, his expression solemn. Then he started chewing on his fist.
Teething.
Though Michael’s hunting teeth had come in quickly, his human front teeth were taking their sweet time about it.
They aren’t sharp.
Thomas interrupted any questions Gabe might have had. “A few minutes, ma’am.”
Abby let her eyes slide shut, too tired to respond to that.
****
Gabe had never felt more out of place in his life. Here he was, sitting in a hospital waiting room, feeding his son—a son he knew nothing about—a bottle of expressed milk.
She must have stopped breastfeeding when Michael started getting teeth.
Gabe prayed Abby didn’t have scars from his son’s hunting teeth. He’d heard it had happened to a few of the early human mates.
The young one dozed, sucking sporadically, his little fingers twitching in response to his dreams. His age was difficult to gauge. Gabe hadn’t been around a lot of babies, crossbred or otherwise, so he wasn’t certain how to tell. From what he’d seen, Michael had sprouted teeth, but he wasn’t able to do more than pull himself along the floor, certainly not a full crawl.
Dozens of questions circling in his mind, he pulled out his mobile phone and dialed Aleeks Daahn’s number from memory. Aleeks was the proud
seir
of a toddling young female and the uncle to both a female and a young Dominant. Surely, he would be able to guess the age of Gabe’s son.
Aleeks answered on the second ring. “Problem, Gabe?”
I called early in the day, during Aleeks’s work day.
“Not a problem but a query. I am caring for”—
I don’t want to involve anyone outside my nest in this, especially not before my own
seir
and
gran-seir
know it.
—”a young Xxanian mix. He has his hunting teeth but not his human teeth. He doesn’t properly crawl, but he does sit up steadily and pull himself with elbows and knees or toes.” He considered the contents of the bag. “He eats ground meat and vegetables. How old would he be...roughly?”
There was a moment of tense silence. “You are caring for a young one and don’t even know his age?”
“It’s a long story.”
One I do not even know myself.
“His mother has a minor injury, and I am caring for the young one while the human doctors care for her.”
“And the young one’s
seir
?” he asked pointedly.
“Has been unavailable thus far. But that will change soon,” he grumbled more to himself than Aleeks.
“He knows then?”
“Yes. He does,” he snapped. “Will you help me or not?”
Aleeks sighed. “What generation? Do you know?”
“Third generation, which is why I asked you and not Daveed. Zondra’s young would be the closest I know.”
“I would guess somewhere between two and three months old then.”
Two or three months. I’ve lost so much time with him.
“Is there a problem, Gabe?” he asked again.
“No. No problem. Thank you, Aleeks.” He hung up before the astute young warrior could ask another question.
Two or three months. How long did Michael gestate? Did Abby know when she left me?
Even if she didn’t, why didn’t she tell me when she found out? Why didn’t Abby trust me to be a proper
seir
to our son?
Until she recovered, there would be no answers to his many questions.
****
“We’ll want to keep you here overnight for observation,” the emergency room doctor pronounced.
“Not a chance.”
He startled and met Abby’s gaze. “Excuse me?”
“I’m nursing a baby, so no overnight and no drugs.” She started to rise from the bed.
“Wait. I can’t just let you walk out of here without knowing you have someone arranged to take care of you at home.”
Her heart stuttered at the obvious answer. “There’s a police officer in the waiting room named Gabe Zhaahvan. I’m sure he’ll help out until I’m back on my feet.”
For Michael. He’ll at least do that for me. I hope.
“And you’ll stay here while I talk to him?” There was a warning couched in that.
“Won’t move a millimeter.”
Though he looked like he’d like to stay and argue with her, the doctor nodded and withdrew. He was gone so long, Abby started to fidget.
What if Gabe refuses? What if they keep me here? How will Michael get fed? Will they let me keep him with me?
The curtain slid back and the doctor came in, Gabe on his heels. Michael looked up at her, smiled, and let out a happy squeal.
She smiled. “There’s my little man.” Abby put her arms out, and Gabe settled Michael in them. She closed her eyes and inhaled his baby scent.
“I changed his diaper,” Gabe informed her. “And he’s had the last bottle of breast milk.”
As if in confirmation her breasts ached to fill another.
“We should get you both home to prepare for his next meal.”
Her heart rate eased a dozen beats or more per minute. “Thank you, Gabe.”
He offered a tense nod but didn’t make any further comments.
It’s coming. We have to talk.
Abby focused on the doctor. “Can I go now?”
“Sign the release, and you’re free to go.”
****
Gabe tightened his fist around the steering wheel of his
Spice
coupe and bit back more questions. He’d held his tongue in check for the taxi ride to the station and the few moments it had taken him to check out and receive emergency leave for three days.
He’d promised to hold his questions until Abby was ready to talk, but how he was going to manage that was a mystery to him.
Abby looked back at Michael, strapped into the car seat Gabe had borrowed from the station. “Thank you,” she repeated. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
You could have decided that at some point much earlier in the seven months we’ve been apart.
“Right.”
Her cheeks flushed, and she bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“For not telling you about Michael.”
Apparently, she’s ready.
“Did you know when you left me?”
“No. Of course not.”
His breath released in a rush. “You still should have told me.”
Abby opened her mouth to talk, shut it again, then swallowed hard. “It wasn’t that simple.”
His anger spiked, and Gabe fought his ridge plates back. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it was to have a Xxanian child without support?”
“I
had
support. I had the best high risk obstetrician in the city and the doctors at SLAL.” She visibly fumed. “Not that the human doctor had much to add to what SLAL did, but I still had her on the team.”
“SLAL?”
Abby nodded solemnly.
“And they didn’t contact me?” Someone at SLAL was going to pay.
“Patient-physician confidentiality.”
“So you asked them not to contact me.” He fisted his hands tighter.
“It wasn’t that simple,” she repeated.
“Then why don’t you tell me what complicated it,” he invited. Gabe wanted to understand. He needed to know she hadn’t believed he’d be a bad
seir
to their son.
“
I
complicated it.” Her breathing hitched, and Abby pressed her fingertips to her mouth, looking close to tears.
Gabe forced his hands to loosen. “Maybe we shouldn’t discuss this now.”
“No. We should. We really should. This discussion should have happened long ago, but I made a mess of it.” She pressed a hand to the liquid stitches at her temple and shook her head.
He sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me? Did you think I wouldn’t be a good
seir
...father to Michael?” His heart thundered in apprehension at what she might say.
“No. I didn’t think that. I’m sure you would be...will be a great father.”
At least she’s talking as if I have a future with our son.
“What did I do to make you leave me?” He’d wondered that since the day she left.
“It wasn’t you. It was me.”
“The oldest line around,” he growled.
“It was. You wanted children, and I—”
“If you didn’t want a child, the time to make that decision has long since passed.” Gabe looked at Michael out of the corner of his eye.
“Of course, I wanted children,” she shouted.
Gabe pulled over to the curb, his head spinning too much to consider driving. It was disconcerting for a Xxanian warrior to be so marginalized physically. “Then why...? Why would you leave me? Was it the idea of binding?” He’d hinted at it with her shortly before she left. Had he scared her away?
Abby shook her head. “I would have loved to.” Her breathing hitched again, and she wiped at her eyes.
“Then why did you leave me?”
“Because they told me I couldn’t have children. Ever. The doctors said...Children were so important to you, and I. Couldn’t. Have. Them.” Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding.
“Oh,
Seir-God
. You thought that was more important to me than...” He cupped Abby’s head and drew her to his chest. “No. I never wanted you to think that.”